


Two Hours

by SpiritsDrifting



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Anger, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:13:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24530602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpiritsDrifting/pseuds/SpiritsDrifting
Summary: A very short re-work of the Ellie/Alec hotel scene during the end bit of Episode 8 of Season 1.
Relationships: Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller
Comments: 8
Kudos: 55





	Two Hours

Three delicate knocks. Then, “It’s me.” Weary and hollow.

Hardy shuffles his aching body to open the lock on the door of his hotel room. He had managed an hour or so ago to indiscriminately throw his coat off somewhere in the room, but a half-untucked button-down and trousers still drapes lifelessly upon him.

He opens the door to Miller, eyes blood-shot, her oversized orange coat swallowing her whole, her face emanating shock and horror and grief - all of it. He doesn’t say a word of greeting, but rather steps gently aside to let her in. He follows her with his eyes, trying to gain a sense of what she needs to say, or hear. At the same time, he’s not sure he could offer anything that might make better sense of what had happened.

“You want tea? I have an electric kettle here.” Hardy motions innocently to a scattered array of tea packets on the dresser. Miller shakes her head and walks carefully towards the opposite side of the room.

“I saw Beth before coming here”, Miller chokes on her words, but she manages to stifle tears. “She hates me. She thinks I knew and I was trying to cover it up.” She rests her head against the wall opposite Hardy, unable to look him in the eye. “I couldn’t even say anything. Nothing came out”.

“You’re the easiest target for her right now. I don’t think you saying anything would change her mind about you not having any complicity in this.” Hardy slumped onto the bed, echoing Miller’s anguish in the moment. “Or not having known.” The room was hushed with silence, until shuffling feet outside their doorway could be heard. “I’m sorry”.

“Why are _you_ sorry?”

_I’m sorry for destroying your life, for arresting your husband. For separating you from Tom._

“Get your things from your house?”, Hardy asks, trying desperately for some form of diversion. Hardy looks up at Miller, now appearing small and sunken by the weight of all the unfathomable wrong in the world. Miller nods gently and, nearly in a trance, trudges over to the nearest tub chair and slumps into its very giving cushion.

Miller is silent for a moment, pensive with her bottom lip quivering slightly, then she unravels. She tells him how she’s struggling to understand the motive of Joe having a private romantic life with an eleven-year-old boy, let alone the urge to murder him out of panic. She’s humiliated that she couldn’t figure out that murderer was lying right next to her, intimately, every night in their bedroom. She should have seen it. _How?,_ Hardy asks. _How? Yes, how could she have?_ Miller suddenly finds that her competing _I should have known_ and _How could I’ve known?_ flip back and forth in her mind, like two switches signaling on and off repeatedly, uselessly.

Miller then realizes that Hardy had known before she had. He tells her he suspected Joe the last day or so.

“All along, you said don’t trust”.

“I really wanted to be wrong”, Hardy exhales out, life drawn out of him like a compressed balloon, tears welling to his eyes at his growing commiseration for Miller’s tragic loss of seemingly all things _familial_.

Silence and sorrow permeated the room and hung around them like wet, heavy rainclouds ready to burst. Perhaps both of them were hoping the other would reach out their arms and offer fierce protection from it. Perhaps they were both desperate for tenderness and unequivocal understanding of the other’s treacherous situation. The possibility hovered like those rainclouds for a moment, then quickly passed, though the latter was silently realized by both of them. Hardy understood that Miller’s life as she knew it was over, but he thought her strong-willed and clever enough to get through to the other side, hopefully unbroken and maybe even contented. Miller, despite not knowing much about her boss’s personal affairs other than his divorce and separation from his only daughter, seemed to accept his life wasn’t quite so easy either, owing to his hardened exterior. Scattered laughter arose from down the hotel hallway, and both of them jerked up and away from the numbing haze.

Miller took in sharp breath of air, carefully unfolded from the sinking cushion and stood up. “Right then, I should be off. I’ve got a mountain of things ahead of me, but I’m spent for tonight.”

“D’you want me to walk you home?”

“No, that’s fine, I’ll be alright.” Miller tight-lipped expression edged on a slight smile.

“Quite right.” Hardy guided her to the door, watched her all the way down the hall until out of sight and grimaced at the thought of her spending these nights alone.

_Ultimately, we’re all alone,_ he thought to himself.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first post here, so I hope you all like it :)


End file.
